“Gambling goes against the teaching of the Bible,” Bishop Schwartz said, “and the fruits of gambling are all bad.” “Bishop Schwartz” is 43-year-old Daniel Schwartz, who sat down with the New York Times to discuss plans for a casino in his western NY community. We first heard about this back in May, when over a dozen Amish appeared in court to protest against the proposed $350 million investment….
“Maybe one each season says ‘don’t take any pictures’”. That’s friend of the blog Katie Troyer answering a question she’s no doubt heard before. You can see Katie and hear her discuss her passion in a new video (below). You may have enjoyed Katie’s photos at various places on the web (and even offline – I have a calendar featuring her work on my wall at home)….
Earlier this year Tom Geist shared his visits to Amish communities in Plains States, including Chouteau, Oklahoma, Hutchinson County, South Dakota, four Nebraska communities, and Yoder, Kansas. The Amish have a scattered presence across the Great Plains, which you can see in this map taken from a directory dedicated to those states (photo by Janar S). Today Tom gives us a look at another Kansas…
Ernest Bontrager has a clip of still images taken in the Amish settlement at Monte Vista, Colorado (Rio Grande and Conejos counties). It’s not a new video (2010), but is a nice look at the type of sights you might see in a western Amish settlement. I haven’t visited Amish further west than Iowa, so I like these looks at communities in the Mountain Time Zone….
A few months ago I started to notice search traffic coming to this site for a curious term. “Amish wood milk” is not something I’d ever heard of. But quite a few people were looking for it, with even dozens a day landing here for “Amish wood milk”-related searches. How where they arriving at Amish America, since–to my knowledge–I’d never written anything about this mystery liquid…
You see a lot of this type of story. Amish-helping-English or vice versa. “Feel good”, though usually a bit boring (the headline tells you all you need to know). Still I’m glad these stories are out there. Good news when a lot of what qualifies as news is downright depressing. What got my attention was the strange event that got Amish and English together in this community…
One of our readers, Carl Oliver, recently attended an event on this month’s Amish auction list. Many Amish-attended auctions are benefit sales–raising funds for medical needs, schools, and other community-wide causes. Others include estate sales, auctions run as a private business, or, as in today’s example, moving sales. You see, moving when you’re an Amish farmer is not as simple as cramming the contents of the house into…
Anne is back with a new piece on her recent visit to her Amish convert son Ed‘s community in Minnesota. When last we heard from Anne, she was describing why she felt like a wimp living Amish for a few days. One thing the Amish have in abundance is children. It’s no surprise when they say their children are the only treasure they can take along to…
Three weeks ago the beard-cutting hate crimes convictions were overturned by a federal appeals court in Ohio. Following part 1 of his look at the case, today Donald Kraybill shares some analysis of the case reversals, including why they happened, why they matter for future cases and what might happen next. Maybe not surprisingly for a legal argument, it turns out the reversal hinged on the interpretation of just…
I love this time-lapse video. It’s the best I’ve ever seen of its kind. Here you can observe 10 hours of barn-raising condensed down to about 200 seconds. This took place in LaRue, Ohio, which is the Kenton Amish community. The photographer’s wife gives the back story: My husband, Scott Miller, shot this video with a Canon 60d Camera using a Pixel TW-282/E3 Wireless remote…